While some questioned its authenticity, others considered this one of the most-witnessed cases of supernatural activity

The Conjuring 2 gave horrorphiles a chance to enter the “house of strange happenings” — even if it was just on the big screen.

The 2016 film stars Madison Wolfe, Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson and focuses on one of the most infamous supernatural cases in history: the Enfield poltergeist. The story — of a young girl thought to be possessed by a demon inside her London home — mystified a nation.

The case involved strange voices, levitation, flying objects, furniture moving through the air, cold breezes and more — and while some called it a hoax, plenty of others are convinced it's one of the most compelling supernatural cases ever documented.

So what really happened during the case of the Enfield poltergeist? Here’s an inside look at the real story that inspired The Conjuring 2.

Peggy Hodgson first heard odd noises from her daughters’ bedroom

It all started in a quaint little home in Enfield, London, in 1977, when Peggy Hodgson, a single mother of four children, heard loud noises coming from her daughters’ bedroom. When she went to tell her daughters Margaret, then 13, and Janet, then 11, to settle down and go to sleep instead of roughhousing, she found them huddled in the corner with terrified expressions on their faces.

“We [told our mom] the chest of drawers was moving toward the bedroom door,” Janet recalled while speaking on iTV1 in 2012. “She said, ‘Oh don’t be silly.’ ”

But then Hodgson witnessed the drawers moving toward the door by a seemingly invisible force, almost as if some supernatural presence was trying to trap the girls in the room. When she tried to push back against the dresser, it wouldn’t budge.

Terrified, the Hodgson family ran across the street to ask for help from the neighbors, Vic and Peggy Nottingham. When Vic went into the house to investigate, he, too, said he heard strange noises coming from around the home. The Hodgsons called the police, and even though one officer claimed to have seen a chair move clear across the room, they deduced that it was not a police matter.

According to the family, that was just the beginning of what would become their nearly 18-month haunting.

The Hodgson family’s haunting lasted a year and a half

“We didn’t understand what was happening,” Margaret told PEOPLE at the Conjuring 2 premiere in Los Angeles in 2016. “We went through periods where we just couldn’t believe what happened, really. It’s frightening. We didn’t like to be on [our] own in the house or anything.”

When the strange incidents continued, the Hodgsons decided to call a popular U.K. publication, the Daily Mirror, to come and investigate the supposed supernatural occurrences. But when the reporter arrived, the house sat silent for hours. It wasn’t until the reporter was about to leave that something happened.

“The photographer came back and a Lego brick hit him above the eye. He still had the mark a few days later. And then Maurice Grosse came in on the case,” Janet said, The Telegraph reported.

The Daily Mirror called the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), who sent Grosse to investigate the case. During his stay at the house, Grosse has said he witnessed more than 2,000 incidents of supernatural activity.

“Furniture turning over, cups filled with water, fires igniting, voices, levitation,” Janet recalled to iTV1 in 2012. “The most frightening [encounter] was when a curtain wrapped itself around my neck next to my bed.”

It was during his time in the house that the supposed poltergeist started speaking through Janet.

Janet Hodgson claimed she was possessed

Janet would often go into a trancelike state where she would speak in a deep, scratchy voice, claiming to be the ghost of a man named Bill Wilkins, who had died in the house years before. (It was later proven that a man by that name was once a resident of the home and did die of a hemorrhage while sitting in the living room.) Janet claimed the ghost would “talk” through her for hours at a time.

Throughout the 18-month experience, several additional paranormal researchers visited the house, including famed demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren. Though the 2016 film takes liberties with time and the extent to which the Warrens were involved with the case, they publicly stated that they were convinced that the supernatural was responsible for the strange happenings inside the house.

“Those who deal with the supernatural day in and day out know the phenomena are there — there’s no doubt about it,” Ed said, according to All That’s Interesting.

Janet Hodgson admitted to faking some supernatural incidents

Of course, many cast their doubts on the events, claiming the children were behind the elaborate hoax and were faking their demonic symptoms. Two SPR experts adamantly questioned Janet’s gruff voice and later caught the children bending spoons themselves.

In fact, Janet admitted that she and her siblings fabricated a few events. “Oh yeah, once or twice [we faked phenomena], just to see if Mr. Grosse and Mr. Playfair would catch us,” she told ITV News in 1980, per the Daily Mail. “They always did.”

She later told the outlet that “two percent” of the events in the house were faked.

Even after all this time, Janet and Margaret said that while they’ve managed to move on from that traumatic time, the haunting “stays with you.”

“Every step of the way,” Margaret told PEOPLE at the Conjuring 2 premiere in Los Angeles in 2016. “It’s just like a death, really: It gets a little bit easier as time goes on. But the fear and the memories of it and what happened never leave you.”